Cosmetic documentary doesn't probe deep enough

I was very excited when I first heard about this documentary - Lindelof, Whedon, Abrams, Moore - they interviewed all the showrunners who have made a considerable impact on the TV landscape. This has got to be fascinating and fun stuff right?

Unfortunately, while the doc does mine the occasional interesting or amusing nugget from many of its subjects, in the end it's an extremely cosmetic and skin deep exploration of what it means to run a successful or unsuccessful U.S. television series. The whole thing feels much like the 'behind the scenes' addendum you might find as a DVD special feature. You never feel like you've actually learned insider information, or things that you didn't already know.

We get to follow a few threads on shows from the writers room to the production (Bones, House of Lies, Men of a Certain Age), but there's not really anything all that groundbreaking or revealing from seeing this stuff.

It's ultimately a very basic and unadventurous documentary. And if you follow the careers of any of the names being interviewed, they don't really give you anything new or insightful about their experiences on their respective shows. Feels like a missed opportunity overall.

There are also a few key cards missing from this deck such as Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, David Chase, Benioff & Weiss, David Simon and Nic Pizzolatto, I understand that it was probably hard enough getting all the names already on the impressive list for this doc but still, the aforementioned writers are pretty much considered the tent poles of contemporary tv drama and therefore their presence and perspectives are sorely missed here.